1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to safety penetrating instruments and, more particularly, to safety penetrating instruments having portal sleeves, penetrating members disposed within the portal sleeves and having sharp tips for penetrating cavity walls and safety shields disposed between the portal sleeves and the penetrating members with automatic retraction of the penetrating members within the penetrating instrument upon penetration to protect tissue and organ structures within the cavities from the sharp tips of the penetrating members.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Penetrating instruments are widely used in medical procedures to gain access to anatomical cavities of various sizes; and, in particular, use of penetrating instruments has become an extremely popular and important first step in endoscopic, or least invasive, procedures to establish an endoscopic portal for many various procedures, with access being established via a portal sleeve positioned during penetration into the cavity with the penetrating instrument. Such penetrating instruments include a penetrating member having a sharp tip or point to pierce or penetrate the tissue forming the cavity wall, and the force required to penetrate the cavity wall is dependent upon the type and thickness of the tissue of the wall. Once the wall is penetrated, it is desirable to protect the sharp tip of the penetrating member to prevent inadvertent contact with or injury to tissue or organ structures in or forming the cavity, and a particular problem exists where substantial force is required to penetrate the cavity wall or the cavity is very small in that, once penetration is achieved, the lack of tissue resistance can result in the sharp tip traveling too far into the cavity and injuring adjacent tissue or organ structures.
Safety trocars having a spring-biased protective shield disposed between an outer sleeve and an inner trocar are marketed by Ethicon, Inc. as the Endopath and by United States Surgical Corp. as the Surgiport. U.S. Pat. No. 4,535,773 to Yoon, No. U.S. Pat. No. 4,601,710 to Moll and U.S. Pat. No. 4,654,030 to Moll et al are illustrative of such safety trocars. A trocar disposed within a portal sleeve and retractable within the sleeve in response to an electrical signal generated when force from tissue contact is removed from the sharp tip of the trocar is set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 4,535,773 to Yoon.
One of the limitations of many prior art safety penetrating instruments is that the trocars cannot be optionally removed from the safety shields upon penetration into body cavities to allow lumens of the safety shields communicating with the body cavities to be used to perform various medical procedures, such as evacuating and supplying fluids to the body cavities, via the lumens. Many prior art safety penetrating instruments have other limitations in that the safety shields are not retractable within the portal sleeves upon penetration into body cavities, and visual, tactile and aural confirmation of cavity penetration are not effectively provided. A disadvantage of prior art methods of penetrating body cavities with safety penetrating instruments is that extension of the safety shields beyond the portal sleeves is not used to create spaces or increase the size of spaces within the body cavities upon penetration of walls of the body cavities such as is useful in forming or enlarging a space between membranes, in penetrating plueral cavities to create or increase the size of a space between the perietal and visceral walls, the epidural canal, thoracostomy and where the cavities being penetrated are very narrow.